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The queen bee is a fascinating creature. In her sacred world, she is royalty. The leader of her hive, the mother of most, if not all that who reside with her, and one whom her dedicated worker bees care for. And she works hard – a well-mated and well-fed (on ‘royal jelly’) queen can lay around 2,000 eggs per days during spring, which amounts for more than half her bodyweight in eggs every day. She is clever, able to control the sex of the eggs she lays. She dominates her workers by releasing pheromones known as the queen’s scent. When a strong, young queen bee senses a new potential queen bee has been born, she locates other virgin queens, stinging them one at a time. In the event that two virgin honey bee queens emerge simultaneously, they fight each other to the death.

Take a swarm of young people with suggestive tan lines and raging hormones; add moonlight, crashing surf and alcohol, and the rest becomes the stuff of lifelong memories. Rarely, but sometimes, it becomes the stuff of lasting love.

The stereotype of the summer romance — even the Urban Dictionary definition — demands that it end come September. It’s just a fling, just fun, all sweat and sand and skin, and then it recedes into rose-hued memory with the arrival of fall.

A summer romance must abide by the words of the poet Philip Larkin: “Always is always now.”

If I had to choose a favorite city in continental USA, it would definitely be NYC. The energy, the street lights, the commotion, the culture and the food, it just takes your breath away. I go to New York every couple of months since it was so close to Baltimore, where I went to university for three years, and i could never get enough of it. The shopping was the best and you always discover something new.

I was with my family this last trip to New York and as usual, all they wanted to do was go shopping but I really really wanted to go see the Prada and Schiaparelli Exhibition (Impossible Conversations) and finally convinced my mom to go with me. As usual, the Met doesn’t disappoint. Photography was strictly forbidden inside the exhibition so I only managed to take a couple of shots. The ballgowns were breathtaking and I highly encourage everyone in NYC to go visit before the exhibition is over on August 19th, so just a little over two months.

The exhibition explores the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two Italian designers from different eras. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias’s “Impossible Interviews” for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, the exhibition features orchestrated conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Iconic ensembles are presented with videos of simulated conversations between Schiaparelli and Prada directed by Baz Luhrmann, focusing on how both women explore similar themes in their work through very different approaches.

Another thing I like to do whenever I go to a museum is to go to the Southeast Asian section see if they have any artifacts or sculptures from Myanmar, my home country. I’m always surprised by all the beautiful buddhist sculptures that they have managed to uncover and transport thousands of miles away to be showcased in all these prominent museums.